Companies are certainly catching onto the trend, and most have the flexibility to work from home, if not at all the time, at least when needed. It’s changing the way we work, especially in the tech sphere. And while it may not be for everybody, employers may find they can save money and increase productivity for some workers. And for some employees, work-from-home benefits may be the difference between an enjoyable and stressful work life.

When I set out to start in on a new business idea, I always make sure it aligns with both my core competencies and my interests. It starts with learning how to discover your strengths as an entrepreneur, and it's how I make sure I'll be engaged, even when the going gets rough. I learned this the hard way when I decided to start a freelance business a few years ago to offer my freelance content marketing services.

Christmas, Halloween, Easter, Yuletide, Hanukkah, Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year, 4th of July, Mother’s Day. There are a ton of traditional holidays that count as solid reasons to explore the side business idea of crafting and selling seasonal decorations. After all, people and businesses pay good money for them. In fact, total sales of Christmas trees in the U.S. alone amounted to a whopping $1.04 billion in 2014. And you still have holiday lights, nativity scenes, crafted hangings, baskets, wreaths, and other decorations to cover, making this a potentially year-round seasonal side business idea.
Other steps in the process of forming a home-based business include selecting a legal structure, filing a fictitious name or "doing business as" statement, and obtaining any needed permits or licenses. The entrepreneur should also evaluate the risks associated with the business venture and make any necessary arrangements for health, life, liability, property, or business interruption insurance. Since it is sometimes difficult for a home-based business to be taken seriously by customers or creditors, it may be helpful to communicate a professional image through stationery and business cards, a separate phone line answered with a formal greeting, and distinct working hours.

Fiverr: Israeli-based Fivver was started in 2010 by Shal Wininger and Micha Kaufam. It's a great resource for selling just about any service online. You can offer gigs as low as $5 but also get paid much more for upgrades and add-ons. There are plenty of providers earning 6 figures on Fiverr so it's definitely a worthwhile cause for generating a healthy income. Just ensure that you provide some serious value.

An edited version of the single was performed at the 2017 People's Choice Awards,[97] where the group made their first appearance as a quartet following Camila Cabello's departure in late 2016. The version was altered, leaving bandmate Lauren Jauregui singing what was formerly Camila's verse, followed by the other three girls singing their verses as normal in black bondage-style outfits. They then ended their performance with a new dance break.

Last but not least, you can also earn money online by building an online community, although the monetization strategies you can pursue will vary a lot depending on your goals. You can build a community with a blog, for example. You can also build an online forum and charge people for membership. You could even build up a Facebook group and use your influence there to sell and promote products.
Try Uber EATS or DoorDash. Uber EATS offers part-time work that’s similar to driving for Uber or Lyft. Instead of picking up passengers, however, you will pick up food orders and deliver them in your area. Pay works similarly, letting you earn a per-job rate plus tips. Door Dash works similarly, letting consumers order food from restaurants and connecting drivers to pick up and drop off their meals.
Now next, you’ll want to pick a WordPress theme from somewhere like ThemeForest, Elegant Themes or OptimizePress. This is the barebones design of your site, which you can then customize with your own branding, copy, and images. That being said, you don’t want to cheap out. It costs less than $100 to buy a theme that will make your website look professional (and you can upgrade to a completely custom design once you get the business going).
There are a variety of tasks that you may be asked to perform. This can include delivering documents, delivering food or restaurant meals, taking pictures of a building for a real estate developer, taking pictures of a menu in an upscale restaurant, or even delivering auto-parts. If you have a good working car (or even a good bicycle), time on your hands, and a lot of energy, this can be a real opportunity to make money online.
Do you play a musical instrument well enough to teach it to others? How about taking your skills at producing music or sound design and teaching others as a service-based business idea based on your experience? Private music instructors in all disciplines charge upwards of $20-100/hr (or more depending upon skill and experience), and you don’t necessarily have to do them in person, either. This makes for a great side business idea that can channel your passion for music into profits.
Web designers are incredibly valuable for technology companies—which is why becoming a freelance web designer is a top side business idea today. Web design is all about mastering the art of creating a beautiful, value-driven experience for the people using a website or app. There are always new websites popping up in need of professional web design, and foundational books like HTML & CSS: Design and Build Websites by acclaimed web designer Jon Duckett and Don't Make Me Think by user experience legend Steve Krug will get you started down the right path to quickly determining whether or not becoming a web designer is a viable side business idea for you.
If you own a car but barely use it, you can make some easy cash as an effortless side business idea by renting it out on Turo. Before you freak out, know that there’s a $1 Million insurance policy on all cars, plus drivers are prescreened, so you can have peace of mind. Closely related to renting out your car is another new service I recently came across (available only in the UK at the moment) called YourParkingSpace where you can sign up to list your available parking space through the app, and earn when people decide to use your spot.
Non-profits, universities, hospitals and other community organizations all have a great need for grant money to supplement their budgets, but grants are notoriously tricky to write for the first time. If you have experience writing grants or are willing to learn how to do it by practicing your skills without pay for a few non-profits, you can start a lucrative freelance grant writing business. According to eHow, grant writers can make anywhere from $40, 300 to $67,000.
Hold a yard sale. If you have a yard or garage and plenty of items to sell, you can have a yard sale as early as tomorrow. By advertising your sale on local Facebook pages and Craigslist, you can also skip the paid newspaper ad and keep all of the profits for yourself. If you don’t have time to price everything, try asking patrons to “make an offer” or grouping similar items on tables with an advertised price (e.g. everything on this table is $5).

Alibaba is a Chinese eCommerce store that matches Chinese suppliers with buyers all over the world. Prices are extremely cheap, providing the possibility of large profits. However, with the potential profits comes more risk. As you are dealing with suppliers in China, if the quality of the product that arrives isn’t up to standard there is little that you can do about it.

What It Is: Companies like Google and Yahoo give you information to search for, and you tell them how closely their results matched what you were looking for. Does a search for Lady Antebellum turn up sites about the music group or links to pre-Civil War period information? If you are Latina, for example, you might be asked to search the way a Spanish speaker might perform a search in English.
We all wear clothes (at least some of the time). Which, of course, makes the business idea of cleaning soiled laundry an obvious hit. In fact, the self-service laundromat industry in the US is worth more than $3 billion, with many related businesses such as a mobile app laundry service, a real rolling mobile laundry service, and home laundry pickup & delivery services springing up each year. Here’s one way you can cash in on the trend as a side business idea.
A person who telecommutes is known as a "telecommuter", "teleworker", and sometimes as a "home-sourced", or "work-at-home" employee. A telecommuter is also called a "telecommuting specialist", as a designation and in a professional context. Many telecommuters work from home, while others, sometimes called "nomad workers" work at coffee shops or other locations. The terms "telecommuting" and "telework" were coined by Jack Nilles in 1973.[11]
Video is growing like crazy. And more and more people are looking for professional help cutting their raw footage into viral-worthy content. If you have the right software and a bit of skill, you can easily make money online as a video editor. Check out these article of Fstoppers on how to become an online video editor and then look for relevant jobs on Mandy.com, Creative Cow Job Search, or ProductionHub.
Great list! I have another to consider that I personally have 35+ years experience providing. Clean up litter outside commercial properties on foot using inexpensive hand tools. It’s almost as easy to do as going for a walk! I started doing this as a side gig in 1981 and soon grew it into a profitable full-time business. I share my experience in my book, Cleanlots.

So many people dream of writing a book, but never go through with it. Yet no matter what, I’m sure you have experience and value you could give through writing a book. By packaging your skills and knowledge into a downloadable eBook that helps people learn a skill, advance their careers, or start a businesses, you can change someone’s life and even make good money online.

I love referral and affiliate marketing. It’s where the vast majority of my income comes from these days. Even if you aren’t a blogger, you can get in on the action as well. You can get paid to refer your friends to a wide variety of legitimate services. While there are many companies like StitchFix that will give you store credit for referrals, we are focusing on those that offer cold, hard cash today. Keep in mind, you will need to be signed up for the program yourself to take advantage of the program. But, you shouldn’t be referring people to things you don’t use anyway.
Anyone interested in making money online should be pursuing passive income, while also working on active income. There are loads of ways to generate an income passively on the internet, many of which start at the foundation of having a blog, generating substantial traffic and building an audience and a list. Is it easy? Nope. Is it worth it? It sure is. But that doesn't mean you need to start a blog to make money online today.
Work from Home Executive Assistant – Education First: “Looking to hire from the Eastern or Central Time Zone… Executive Assistants provide general administrative assistance to a team of 12-15 people who all work from virtual offices around the country. On the team, this position assumes a direct executive support role for 3-4 senior leaders that includes intensive, complex calendar management and travel planning. Qualifications and Personal Characteristics: At least five years’ experience in a fast-pace environment supporting multiple high-volume executives and senior-level leaders with calendar management and coordination of complex meetings; experience establishing open lines of communication, or ‘managing-up,’ with executive leaders to more effectively allocate their time so as to optimize their productivity and quality of work; precise communication, both orally and in writing, with a solutions focus and customer service orientation; experience scheduling complex travel arrangements and compiling expenses.”
Research selling prices of items similar to yours. Look up completed sales or current listings of items similar to yours. Find the high- and low-end prices, and price your object around the median price level. If you want your item to sell quickly, price it at the low end. The condition of the item also affects the price. Items in poorer condition should be priced at the lower end. Also, consider how many listings there already are of items similar to yours. If many similar items will be competing with yours, you may have to set the price lower to get the sale.[28]
A meta-analysis of 46 studies of telecommuting involving 12,833 employees conducted by Ravi Gajendran and David A. Harrison in the Journal of Applied Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA), found that telecommuting has largely positive consequences for employees and employers.[74][75] In their meta-analytic study, Gajendran and Harrison found that telecommuting had modest but beneficial effects on employees' job satisfaction, perceived autonomy, stress levels, manager-rated job performance, and (lower) work-family conflict. Telecommuting also reduces turnover intent, or the intention to quit one’s job. Increased job satisfaction, decreased turnover intent and role stress related to telecommuting partly because of a decrease in work-family conflict. Additionally, the increase in autonomy from teleworking in turn increases job satisfaction.[citation needed] Although a number of scholars and managers[76] had previously expressed fears that employee careers might suffer and workplace relationships might be damaged because of telecommuting, the meta-analysis found that there are no generally detrimental effects on the quality of workplace relationships and career outcomes. Telecommuting actually was found to positively affect employee-supervisor relations and the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover intent was in part due to supervisor relationship quality. Only high-intensity telecommuting (where employees work from home for more than 2.5 days a week) harmed employee relationships with co-workers, even though it did reduce work-family conflict.
Ready to enter the ecommerce fray? Why not sell your own stuff. Of course, along with selling your own stuff on your own website comes a whole slew of both responsibilities and technical configuration and requirements. For starters, you'll need a website and a hosting account. You'll also need a merchant account (sure you can use Stripe or PayPal). Then you'll need to design that site, build a sales funnel, create a lead magnet and do some email marketing.
When I used to work at CreativeLive, I regularly paid $250-$500 (or even much more depending upon audience size) per episode for 90 seconds worth of advertisements on relevant podcasts like The Tim Ferriss Show, the #1 business podcast right now from the 4-Hour Workweek author, Tim Ferriss. The podcast has even helped Tim launch his latest New York Times bestseller, Tools of Titans to a wider readership.
What It Is: What better way to alleviate your travel bug than to work as a remote travel agent or consultant? Whether part- or full-time, spend your working hours dreaming up itineraries, flight plans, hotels, and activities for clients looking to travel far and wide. Then, take advantage of your discounts (hey, perks of the job) and go wherever your heart desires, whenever your heart desires.

According to an article from New York Times, telecommuting now takes about 2.6 percent of the American workforce not including remote works like drivers. The article also mentions an experiment done by Nicholas Bloom. Nicholas Bloom is an economics professor from Stanford University. During this experiment, 250 workers were picked randomly from Ctrip to work either at home or at an office. Ctrip is a large China travel agency. The result showed that those who telecommuted worked longer hours than those who worked at an office. The telecommuters were also more productive and happier. Ctrip saved around 2K from telecommuting. Although the quitting rate decreased for telecommuters, the promotion rate also decreased. Many telecommuters asked to be back in the office at the end with reasoning like loneliness and desire for promotion. Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, came to the conclusion that most workers prefer telecommuting and office work combined. Telecommuting increases efficiency and workers’ flexibility.[116] America has an increasing trend of using teleworking due to its strong economics and multimedia services. Among the top 10 telecommuter countries, U.S is ranked number one;[117] however, developing countries like China is also catching up to the trend. An article from money.163.com states that the number of telecommuters in the Asia pacific region exceeds region like America, Europe, Middle East and Africa. Asia Pacific region has about 37% telecommuters while the others have about 23-4%.[dubious – discuss] Chinese citizens also favor the combination of telecommuting and office work due to reason like disturbance at work and increase in flexibility.[118] Not all workers have the chance to telecommute. One of the ethical issues behind telecommuting is who should have the chance to telecommute? One may have more chance to work at home because he/she has young children. The other one may argue he/she also has personal problems. It is favored by most workers to combine telecommuting and office work. Many think that telecommuting once or twice a week is a reasonable schedule. Businesses also favor this suggestion because workers are more satisfied and companies save money from it.

Since time is the most precious commodity on this earth, invest the time at the front-end so that you can reap the benefits on the back-end. This means putting in a bit of sweat equity and not getting paid today. Rather, you'll get paid somewhere down the road. And you'll continue getting paid whether you keep building that passive income stream or you stop. It's obvious that this is the preferred route, but clearly the road less traveled.
There are quite literally hundreds of clever ways to make money online. From taking online surveys, to renting or selling your old clothes, flipping your iPhone to someone in a different country, and even buying low-cost products locally, just to resell them for a higher price on Amazon. There’s truly no shortage of unique ways to make money online.
It’s no secret: getting out of bed to go to work in the morning is hard. Traffic jams, metro delays, and the daily grind of an office routine can all seriously detract from our excitement to show up at the job every day. But what if you didn’t have to show up at the job every day? What if you didn’t even have to get out of bed in the morning in order to be a productive contributor to your company?
Make sure you are buying items that are highly sellable, meaning that you there is a large market so you won’t have to wait years to find a buyer. And be disciplined enough only to buy items that allow you plenty of markup for resale. Specialization, or at least having most of your products fit your specialization, is highly likely to increase your chances of success.

Companies might also retain more employees if they enact a work from home benefit. Stanford professor, Nick Bloom, conducted a study to evaluate the benefits of working from home. He found workers were more productive, got more done, worked longer hours, took less breaks, and used less sick time than their in-office counterparts. These employees were also happier and quit less than those who went into the office on a regular basis. He estimated that, on average, the company saved about $2,000 per every employee who worked from home.

If you’re thinking about starting your own home-based business, the available options can seem overwhelming. What type of business is the best fit for your background, skills, and interests? If you don’t have a lot of initial capital to invest, which ones can be started at a low cost? And, most important, which home business has the best chance of succeeding, especially with the U.S. economy still on the rebound?

Software drives businesses today. This is a fact not lost on individuals and companies attempting to earn a profit, make a name for themselves, or simply get things done. As a result, the job outlook for software developers will be much sunnier than prospects for many other occupations—creating massive opportunities for this business idea well into the future. In fact, it won’t take you long to find a good-paying software development project as a side business idea on sites like Upwork, Guru.com, and Freelancer. LinkedIn also recently launched their brand new freelancing platform, ProFinder which has a dedicated section just for hiring talented software developers.

Non-profits, universities, hospitals and other community organizations all have a great need for grant money to supplement their budgets, but grants are notoriously tricky to write for the first time. If you have experience writing grants or are willing to learn how to do it by practicing your skills without pay for a few non-profits, you can start a lucrative freelance grant writing business. According to eHow, grant writers can make anywhere from $40, 300 to $67,000.

Employees aren’t the only ones who benefit from working from home; a company can benefit just as greatly from a remote employee. “For employers telecommuting can limit absences, increase productivity, and save money. This is most common in the tech sphere because tech companies have the infrastructure to maintain remote workers. With telecommuting the idea of the office space is changing but many are saying that it is for the better," says Ari Zoldan CEO, Quantum Networks, LLC.

To be clear, providing care for the elderly often requires a broader set of credentials (as it should) so this business idea isn't one most people can get started with this weekend. These credentials may include licenses, training certificates, business permits, and tax forms depending on which state you wish to operate, the level of care you intend to provide, and whether you plan on running a formal business or just hiring yourself out as an independent worker as a side business idea. If you’re already giving unpaid care to an elderly relative or friend, you may want to review Medicaid provisions for some compensation. In all cases, you need genuine affection for the elderly, a lot of common sense, and good knowledge of first aid, CPR, and elderly care basics to excel with this side business idea.
The group performed the song for the first time on television on February 29, 2016, on a special after-Oscars episode on Live! with Kelly and Michael. Recreating the set of the music video, they performed the song on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on March 24, 2016 and on Alan Carr: Chatty Man approximately two weeks later.[87] The group performed the song on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on May 10,[88][89] dancing in and around a car prop and at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards on May 22 alongside Ty Dolla Sign.[90] Other performances include the 2016 Much Music Video Awards[91] and the 2016 CMT Music Awards, where the group performed the song with country singer Cam, as a mashup with Cam's single, Mayday.
Of course, successful writers need to have a firm grasp on grammar and tone, superb editing chops, and the ability to do their own research and synthesize content that they might be unfamiliar with. It could help if you become an expert in a few different fields, like technology or small business finance, and it’s always important for all freelancers to know how to market themselves and network with potential customers.
On May 24, 2010, the Senate passed the Telework Enhancement Act (S. 707) sponsored by Sens. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio). The bill grants Federal employees eligibility to telework and requires Federal agencies to establish telework policies and identify telework managers.[105] On July 14, 2010, the House passed the Telework Improvements Act of 2010 (H.R. 1722) with a vote of 290-131. The U.S. Senate passed the final version of the legislation by unanimous consent on September 29, 2010 and the House passed it with a bipartisan vote of 254-152 on November 18, 2010.[106] On December 9, 2010 President Obama signed H.R. 1722, the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010, into law.[107] The Telework Enhancement Act of 2012 provided a framework for U.S. agencies to offer teleworking as a viable option to employees. By increasing the number of employees who telework, the Telework Enhancement Act has three main objectives. (1) Improve continuity of operations, (2) Promote management Effectiveness and (3) Enhance work-life balance.[108]
Last but not least, you can also earn money online by building an online community, although the monetization strategies you can pursue will vary a lot depending on your goals. You can build a community with a blog, for example. You can also build an online forum and charge people for membership. You could even build up a Facebook group and use your influence there to sell and promote products.